At 102, Connie Marrero spends days in Cuba

From Rick Maese at the Washington Post on March 25, 2014, with mention of SABR member Kit Krieger:

Kit Krieger went to visit an old friend last month. He boarded a plane, landed at José Martí International Airport in Havana and made his way to a colorful and compact neighborhood called Cerro, where he found the familiar three-bedroom apartment on the second floor.

Inside, there he was, wearing a Washington Nationals cap, a big cigar poking from his mouth. The same but different.

“It was Connie,” Krieger said. “I mean, he looked like Connie.”

But the old man seated in the wheelchair didn’t show any signs of recognition. There was 102 years of life there, a man who spawned superlatives in two languages and in two countries, who struck out Mantle and Williams and all the rest, who Life magazine once called the “most implausible ballplayer in the U.S.,” who lived through a revolution and inspired generations of Cubans.

Connie Marrero, the oldest living former major league baseball player, had withered to maybe 80 pounds. He no longer smoked the cigar, Krieger said, just moistened it and let it roll around between his lips, letting the flavor take him somewhere else. He couldn’t see and couldn’t talk.